Financial MicroSystems,Inc. Write-Up Made Simple!
Implementing
Highlighted CLS Features
CLS is a real workhorse
– that much you already know. It’s fast, flexible and easy to learn
and use! And, it’s reliable! In using CLS on a day-to-day basis, however,
it’s easy to forget just how powerful CLS really is.
Accessing
New Programs (Password Maintenance)
Over time, several
new programs have been added to CLS. However, they won't automatically appear
on the CLS menus. To add these programs:
Select SI
2, Password Maintenance. Press the down-arrow until
you see each of the following prompts. A value of 0 may appear
next to some of these prompts. Change each 0 to a 3.
BR Bank Reconciliation
DM Description File Maintenance
DS DOS Shell Utility
LR Lock File Release (CLS Network version only)
QE Query Employee Detail
QT Query Transaction Detail
RA Ratio Analysis
TT Ledger Time-Tracker
WI Worksheet Interface
When finished,
press Esc to move to the Accept or Escape? (A,Esc)
prompt, and then press A to accept the changes.
CLS
On-Line Documentation
Many of the CLS
highlights listed below refer you to the CLS documentation for more information.
When you install CLS, "on-line" manuals for CLS and any add-on products you
purchased, in the form of Adobe PDF files, are copied to your hard disk.
A printed version of the CLS Getting Started Guide is
also included with CLS. However, prior to CLS 5.4, the printed manual did not
include Chapter 5, CLS Concepts; the on-line version does.
To read the on-line
CLS documentation, you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader (version
4 or later). To set up a desktop icon to access the on-line documentation, or
for help installing Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free copy of which is included on
the CLS CD), refer to Chapter 2 of the printed
CLS Getting Started Guide.
Below are a few
examples of CLS features you may not be currently using:
Automatic Income
Tax Calculations
Automatic Inventory
Adjustments
Departmental Income
Statements
Employee/Vendor
Missing Information Report
Enforced Cosmetics
FICA Adjustments for Cash-Basis
Employees
Financial Statement
Print Options (B,I,U)
Income Tax Summary
Leadsheets
Pro Forma Journal
Entries
Ratio Analysis
Special Format P&L
Time-Tracker
Trial Balance, Entering
Trial Balance, Printing
Trial Balance Worksheet
with Adjustments
Verification of Employee
Earnings
Worksheet Interface
Year-to-Date Transactions
Sorted by Payee
Automatic
Income Tax Calculations and Inventory Adjustments
CLS can automatically
estimate your clients’ federal and state income tax obligations. To use
this feature:
- Rates for federal,
state, and “other” income taxes may be defined in SI 6.
- Use
LI 3 (6) to set up the income tax calculation(s) for each client.
- You may also
exclude certain account balances from the calculations. Use MF 1
to assign an H option to the account(s), and then enter the
percentage to exclude.
- Each period,
when all transactions for the period have been entered, use CT 6
to create the estimated income tax transactions. This routine may be run as
often as necessary.
- To learn more
about income tax calculations, refer to Chapter 5 of the CLS
Getting Started Guide and to the relevant program documentation in the
CLS Reference Guide.
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Automatic
Inventory Adjustments
If you use standard
sales percentages for cost of goods sold (CGS), CLS can automatically create
the CGS entries for up to twelve inventory accounts. Two types of transactions
may be created: either “simple” CGS transactions, with a debit to
cost of sales and a credit to inventory, or “perpetual inventory”
transactions, which show both beginning and ending inventory on the P&L.
To implement:
- Use
LI 3 (5) to set up the inventory/CGS calculation(s) for each client.
All inventory calculations for the client must use the same calculation type.
- Each period,
when all transactions for the period have been entered, use CT 5
to create the inventory/CGS transactions. This routine may be run as often
as necessary.
- To learn more
about inventory/CGS calculations, refer to Chapter 5 of the CLS
Getting Started Guide and to the relevant program documentation in the
CLS Reference Guide.
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Departmental
Income Statements
You can easily create
departmental income statements in CLS; CLS can handle up to 10,000 departments
in a ledger. You can also prepare division-level financial statements. To implement
a departmental P&L:
- In LI
3 (1), change the Income Statement Type to D.
- If the chart
of accounts doesn’t exist yet, you may copy one from a non-departmental
or a departmental client (don’t copy the departmental accounts).
- If you will
need more than 99 departments, use LI 9 (8) to increase the
size of the departmental portion of the account number.
- Use DF
1 to define the department numbers you want to use. You may also
define divisions (where the department number contains at least one letter).
Divisions are “reporting” entities only - all transactions must
be posted to numeric accounts.
- You may use
MF 6 to create the departmental accounts for a ledger; however,
this step is necessary only if you plan to import transactions into CLS. The
departmental accounts will be created automatically when transactions are
entered using the ET program.
- When entering
departmental transactions in ET, simply append the appropriate
department number to the basic account number (e.g., 90301).
- You may print
departmental or company-level financial statements, general ledgers, transactions
registers and trial balances.
- To learn more
about departments and divisions, or to implement a departmental balance sheet,
refer to Chapter 5 of the CLS Getting Started Guide and
to the relevant program documentation in the CLS Reference Guide.
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Employee/Vendor
Missing Information Report
Not sure you’ve
entered all of the required employee and vendor information in CLS? You can
print a list (or worksheet) of employees or vendors with missing social security
numbers or missing address information. To use this feature:
- Select EL
4 to print a missing information list (or EL 5 for
a worksheet), and select either the current ledger or all ledgers.
- If you choose
all ledgers, select a specific calendar year and/or a specific payroll series
type.
- You can include
year-to-date gross on the report or worksheet, and you can exclude employees
or vendors that fall below a selected minimum.
- To learn more
about missing information reports/worksheets, refer to Chapter 3
of the CLS Payroll Guide.
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Enforced
Cosmetics
Enforced cosmetics
causes titles, footnotes, datelines and account descriptions to appear on financial
statements in a specific case, regardless of how they were entered. Use this
option to clean up your financial statements, or simply to make them consistent
for all clients. To implement this feature:
- Even though
you can implement this feature on a ledger-by-ledger basis (using MF
9), it is much easier to set it up globally. In SI 1 (2,2),
simply answer Y to Use These Global Settings.
- If the default
settings are not correct, or you would prefer a different look, you may change
the settings here.
- If there are
specific words or abbreviations that you want to appear in a certain case,
use SI 1 (2,3) to define them exactly as you want them to
appear.
- If you want
to print certain account descriptions exactly as entered, use MF 1
to place a Y option on these accounts.
- When you print
financial statements, the selections you make here will be automatically applied.
- For more information,
refer to the SI and MF program documentation
in the CLS Reference Guide.
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FICA
Adjustments for Cash-Basis Employees
If your clients
have cash-basis agricultural or household employees, CLS can automatically calculate
the correct FICA to be reported and add it to their gross pay. To implement
this feature:
- Use PF
1 to create a payroll series for the agricultural or household employees.
In the Empl Options field, assign either an A or
an H option. If the client has both types of employees, create
a separate payroll series for each type.
- In PF
3, define columns for Gross Pay (*), Social
Security (A) and Medicare (M),
along with a column to hold the FICA portion of Gross Wages to be
calculated by CLS (Y).
- In
EF 1 to create a record for each agricultural or household employee.
- Use ET
to enter the cash wages paid to each employee.
- Run CT
2 (1) to calculate Social Security and Medicare for each employee;
the offset will be posted to the Y column on the payroll
journal and to the appropriate account in the ledger.
- For agricultural
employees, use TW 4 to prepare the 943 form.
- For household
employees, the payroll journal (PJ) will provide the totals
needed to complete Schedule H of the 1040 form.
- W-2s can now
be printed for these employees.
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Financial
Statement Print Options (B,I,U)
Options in SI
1(2) will let you print titles on financial statements
using bold, italics or underlines. This feature provides very professional looking
statements. To implement this feature:
- It is easy to
set up this feature globally. In SI 1 (2,1), simply
answer Y to Use These Global Settings.
- You may accept
the default settings or, if you prefer a different look, change them here.
- When the financial
statements are printed, your choices will be automatically applied.
- You may also
implement this feature on a ledger-by-ledger basis (by answering questions
in LI 3 (1) and then applying the B, I
or U options to specific title accounts in MF 1,
but this approach is time-consuming and not recommended.
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Income
Tax Summary
If you are not using
the CLS tax package interface, but would like to rearrange the balances on the
client’s trial balance to facilitate tax package entry, set up an Income
Tax Summary for the client. Assign each account to a line on the tax return;
the printed report list account balances by line, and total them. If you use
a standard chart of accounts, the setup can then be copied from one client to
another.
- In LI
3 (1), answer Y to Use Income Tax Summary.
- Use MF
1 to associate a tax form, page, schedule and line number with each
postable account.
- Use ML
5 to list the income tax summary setup information you have entered.
- At the end
of the year, use TB 7 to print the income tax summary.
- You may use
LI 2 (6) to copy the income tax summary setup to other ledgers.
- For more information,
refer to the relevant program documentation in the CLS Reference Guide.
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Leadsheets
Getting ready to
do an audit? If the client is already set up in CLS, leadsheets for the client
can be created using the TB program. Enter the adjustments
when the audit is complete, and then reprint the leadsheets or trial balance
in the leadsheet format. To implement:
- Use TB
6 (1) to define the leadsheets you will need (e.g. Cash, Accounts
Receivable, Accounts Payable, etc.).
- Use TB
6 (3) to assign the appropriate accounts to each leadsheet.
- Use TB
6 (4) to print the initial leadsheets for the client.
- If needed,
use LI 4 to enter a description for Source Code 18
(e.g., TB Worksheet-Adjustments). Answer Y to Use Source
Code 18 as Standard Workpaper Entry. You may also enter descriptions for
Source Codes 16 and 17 if some of your adjustments will be repeating
or reversing entries.
- In ET,
use Source Code 18 (and 16 or 17, as appropriate) when
entering your audit adjustments.
- These audit
adjustments will also appear on the Trial Balance Worksheet with Adjustments
(TB 4 (2) or TB 5 (2)).
- For more information
about leadsheets, refer to the TB program documentation in Chapter
3 of the CLS Reference Guide.
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Pro
Forma Journal Entries
If you have to enter
the same journal entries each period, but with different dollar amounts, why
not set them up as pro forma journal entries. Each period, simply enter the
current amounts; CLS will then create transactions for the current period. You
can even print worksheets to be used as input documents. To implement this feature:
- Choose Menu
Selection 4 from the ET program menu.
- If you don’t
see the ET menu when you select ET from
the CLS Program Menu, change the answer to the Show ET Program
Menu prompt to Y in LI 3 (1).
- Use ET
4 (1) to define your pro forma journal entries. Each journal
entry can have an unlimited number of lines; the line sequence can be changed
if needed.
- Each period,
use ET 4 (2) to enter the new journal entry amounts and create
transactions.
- If you wish,
you may enter the amounts in ET 4 (2) without creating the
transactions, review the journal entries using ET 4 (3),
then create the transactions using ET 4 (4).
- You may use
ET 4 (5) to print pro forma journal entry worksheets.
- For more information,
refer to the ET program documentation in the CLS Reference
Guide.
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Ratio
Analysis
Would you like to
provide your clients with sophisticated ratio analysis reports? The CLS Ratio
Analysis program offers twenty-six predefined financial ratios (including five
Altman’s Z-Score ratios). You can include any or all of these ratios in
your reports, or define new ratios as needed. You may also compare the current-year
ratios to those for last year or to industry standards.
- Begin by using
LI 2 (7) to copy Financial Ratio definitions from the JCC
sample ledger; you must be logged onto the ledger where the ratio definitions
are to be copied. If you can’t find JCC, look for it
in the CLS program path - normally this will be c:\newcls).
- Using RA
1, select the reports you want to print. Assign an X
option to a report to suppress it. You can also change a report title, select
a comparative report or add/change a footnote.
- Use RA
2 to change a ratio category description or add new ones. Assign
an X option to a category to suppress it.
- Use RA
3 to review or change accounts associated with the key words CLS
uses when calculating ratios. This step is mandatory.
- Use RA
4 to change a ratio’s description or calculation method. Assign
an X option to a ratio to suppress it.
- To enter industry
standard figures for comparative reports, use RA 5. Last
year’s ratios will be automatically derived from history maintained
by CLS.
- Use RA
7 to print your selected financial ratios.
- The ratio setup
you have defined for this ledger may now be copied to other clients as needed.
- For additional
help in setting up financial ratios, refer to Chapter 3 of the CLS
Reference Guide.
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Special
Format P&L
Use a special format
P&L to change the sequence of columns on the P&L, or to add or delete
columns, to provide a client with a custom income statement. Also, the special
format P&L offers the only way to prepare a P&L containing
"ratio" columns (e.g., $ per sq. ft., $ per patient day), or to compare
actual expenditures with a total budget.
- CLS provides
two different groups of predefined "column codes" for use when building
a special format P&L:
- The first
group consists of single-letter codes (e.g., a, b, c, ... A, B, C) that
identify a certain type of balance (e.g., this year, last year, ratio,
budget, budget variance, etc.). Upper case letters are used to indicate
year-to-date activity; lower case letters indicate current period activity.
When defining a special format P&L, press F1 to see
a pop-up list of these codes.
- The second
group consists of four types of "@" codes:
@b (budget)
@l (last year)
@f (forcast - new in CLS 5.4)
@p (current year)
Along with each code, you must specify either a period
number (e.g., @b2) or a range of periods (e.g., @b 1:3). With the current-year
codes @b, @f, @p you may also use relative periods (e.g., @b0,
@b-1, @b-2).
Again, upper case letters indicate year-to-date; lower
case indicates current period activity. Because of the large number
of combinations available, no pop-up list is available when using this
type of column code.
- Both types of
codes may be used in the same report.
- For a one-time
report, you can enter the special format codes in PL 9 (PL
8 for CLS 5.3 and earlier). To set up a report permanently, enter
the formats in LI 3 (7); you may save up to four special
format P&Ls for each ledger
- For more information
about special format P&Ls, see Chapter 5 of the CLS Getting
Starged Guide and Chapter 3 of the CLS Reference Guide.
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Time
Tracker
CLS has been continuously
tracking time and transactions for each client since this feature was introduced.
You can now examine each client’s monthly activity, both this year and
last year, and you can compare clients.
- To access the
Time-Tracker, select TT from the CLS File Maintenance
Menu.
- You may use
TT 1 to assign values to time and transactions. This is an
optional step, but it can help you place a more objective value on the write-up
work performed for a client.
- Use TT
6, 7 or 8 to review the time and
transactions for each client, or to compare clients.
- Unless you
are at one of the CLS main menus or in the SI program,
CLS continuously accumulates the time spent in each client.
- Time-Tracker
counts only the currently active transactions; it does not include deleted
transactions.
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Trial
Balance, Entering
Do you need to create
financial statements for clients who give you only a trial balance at the end
of the period or year? Using the Enter a Trial Balance function, enter
the ending account balances for the period. CLS will create the current-period
transactions needed to take you from the beginning balance in each account to
its new ending balance. To use this feature:
- Choose Menu
Selection 2 from the ET program menu.
- If you don’t
see the ET menu when you select ET from
the CLS program menu, change the answer to the Show ET Program Menu
prompt to Y in LI 3 (1).
- The process
consists of three steps:
1. Use ET 2 (1) to enter the new trial balance. You may start
with a zero balance in each account or with the previous trial balance.
2. Use ET 2 (2) to view or print a list of the transactions
to be created.
3. Use ET 2 (3) to create current period transactions.
- For more information,
refer to the ET program documentation in the CLS Reference
Guide.
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Trial
Balance, Printing
CLS includes four
different trial balance formats. These reports are available from TB
3. To select formats 2, 3 or 4,
you must have comparative history. You may select:
- The standard
format (also available from Batch Processing).
- A comparison
with last period
- A comparison
with last year
- The lead sheet
format
- For more information,
refer to the TB program documentation in Chapter 3 of the
CLS Reference Guide.
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Trial
Balance Worksheet with Adjustments
CLS lets you print
a trial balance worksheet for each client (or a trial balance in the lead sheet
format) showing your year-end adjustments. To implement this feature for a specific
client:
- If needed,
use LI 4 to enter a description for Source Code 18
(e.g., TB Worksheet-Adjustments), and answer Y to
Use Source Code 18 as Standard Workpaper Entry. You
may also enter descriptions for Source Codes 16 and
17 if some of your adjustments will be repeating or reversing entries.
- In ET,
use Source Code 18 (and 16 or 17,
as appropriate) when entering your adjustments.
- Select TB
4 or 5, and then choose 2. Worksheet With
Adjustments.
- The worksheet
will show the beginning balance for each account (before adjustments), then
list all of your adjusting entries to arrive at the ending balance.
- Adjustments
will include source code, batch number, reference and amount.
- For more information,
refer to the TB program documentation in Chapter 3
of the CLS Reference Guide.
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Verification
of Employee Earnings
You are often asked
to verify an employee’s earnings for the year. Using the QE
program, CLS can print a formal verification, including your name, address and
phone number, and a place for you to sign the form.
- Select QE
from the CLS Program Selection Menu.
- Select QE
2 (paycheck detail) or QE 3 (quarterly summaries).
- Enter Y
at the Verification of Employee Earnings prompt.
- CLS automatically
includes your firm name and phone and fax numbers if this information has
been entered in SI 1 (3,1).
- Enter/edit
the signature line to be printed on the verification.
- You can choose
to show all of the paycheck activity, or just gross pay.
- For more information
about the Verification of Employee Earnings, refer to QE
program documentation in Chapter 3 of the CLS Payroll Guide.
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Worksheet
Interface
This CLS program
lets you define templates so that account balances can be transferred to Lotus
or Excel spreadsheets. Since accounts can be transferred (or grouped)
in any order, this feature can be used to create reports that can’t be
produced by CLS itself.
- Begin by defining
a worksheet 'template'. The template is a definition of the information you
want extracted from CLS and transferred to Lotus or Excel.
- The template
must be saved as a Lotus 1-2-3 wk1 file, with a .wk1 extension.
This template format is compatible with all current versions of Lotus 1-2-3,
Excel, and QuattroPro. It will save all text, formulas, and column widths
included in the template, and some numeric formats.
However, it will not preserve fonts.
- Once a template
has been defined, use WI 2 to read the template and create
a new output file containing current ledgr balances. If the template is properly
designed, you can normally reuse it each period with few (or no) changes.
- The output file
can now be edited to add specific fonts or numeric formats.
- For more information,
refer to the Worksheet Interface documentation contained in WIManual.pdf
(formally, Chapter 6 of the CLS Getting Started Guide).
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Year-to-Date
Transactions Sorted by Payee
At the end of the
year, you will need to know the total amount paid to each vendor so that 1099s
can be issued if needed. If you used vendor numbers when entering transactions
in CLS, you already have the information you need. If not, this QT
option will let you sort the year’s transactions by payee and total them.
- Select QT
from the CLS Program Menu.
- Select QT
2, Query Year-to-Date Detail.
- At the Sort
By (1,2) prompt, enter 2 to sort transactions
by Source Code and Payee.
- If you wish
to exclude transactions that already have employee or vendor numbers,
enter 0 (zero) in the Employee Number From and To
fields.
- CLS will list
each payee’s transactions, and show a total for the year.
- You may use
QT 3 to change or correct payee names; however, if you re-close
the previous period, any changes that affect prior-period transactions will
be lost. Also, this feature can’t be used on transactions with employee
or vendor numbers.
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